Fugitive Knew ‘New Life’ Would End

Arthur Bembury hasn’t gone by his own name in nearly 14 years and he would just as soon keep it that way.

“I’ve been Doug Henare for a long time,” the once aspiring real estate broker said Tuesday. “I’m not Arthur Bembury anyway.”

Today, Henare/Bembury, 37, is in a cell at the Los Angeles Central Jail because others remembered who he really was.

Los Angeles police, aided by Massachusetts authorities, last week arrested Bembury on a felony fugitive warrant that said he was a convicted murderer, who escaped from Norfolk state prison near Boston during a weekend furlough in 1974.

A Different Existence

The case attracted widespread publicity when the arresting officers acknowledged that Bembury--using the alias of Franklin Douglas Henare--had lived a model existence as a father, businessman and youth volunteer in Los Angeles since his escape.

In a jail interview Tuesday, Bembury said he genuinely enjoyed his life as an exemplary citizen. He volunteered for the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and a Los Angeles private foundation for wayward youths, among others.

“My application is still on file with the Junior Foundation of the Blind,” he confided.

But he grew tired of the lies.

“Somebody asks where you’re from and you say ‘Florida,’ ” the blue denim-clad prisoner said. “And they ask where in Florida and you say ‘Pensacola.’ Then they ask, ‘uptown’ or ‘downtown . . . ‘ And I hated to lie . . . people were really nice to me, accepting me at face.

” . . . Like the folks at Hettig and Co. (the Marina del Rey real estate office where he was employed). They’ll be remembered as the place where I was arrested. But they were real nice to me. I’d like to publicly apologize for that.”

Not a Surprise

Bembury said he was not surprised when he was finally apprehended.

“I was using my own (finger) prints--when I applied for a real estate license (in 1986) and other jobs,” he said.

“They took my prints when I was arrested for rape (a 1986 charge dropped because of insufficient evidence) and in 1982 (on a drunk driving charge that resulted in a weekend in jail and a fine). I knew sooner or later they would catch up with me.

“I thought several times of turning myself in. . . . But at least now, the lying’s over.”

Bembury said he tried several times to tell his secret to his longtime girlfriend, Gayle Babineaux, who is the mother of his three children. But he never did.

“It’s a secret you can’t tell anyone,” he concluded.

As he did during his murder trial, Bembury on Tuesday insisted he was innocent of the murder of Louise Simmons, the mother of a 14-year-old girl whom he was seeing.

Arrested in Alley

“True, I had the weapon. But I didn’t shoot her,” he maintained. “I asked the police, when they arrested me, to test and see if I had any (gun) powder burns to prove I didn’t shoot her. I asked them several times, but they said it wasn’t necessary.”

Capt. Curt Wood of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections said Bembury, then 17, was found in an alley behind the Simmons home with the murder weapon, a .22-caliber revolver, in his possession. Earlier, witnesses said he and the Simmons woman argued over whether he could continue to see her daughter, Faye.

Bembury was convicted of second-degree murder for Simmons’ murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

But he said he found prison life too depressing and racially tense.

“There was all kinds of trouble, a good friend of mine was shot after a gun was smuggled in to him (in prison),” he said.

Chance to Escape

During a weekend furlough in August of 1973--his fifth such pass since his conviction--Bembury decided he had to escape. He said he was helped by “sympathetic” people in the Boston area, who were appalled at the living conditions in the Massachusetts prison system.

Bembury declined to be more specific or reveal the names of those who helped him.

But as he sat in a visitors booth at the L.A. downtown jail, Bembury said he shouldn’t have escaped.

“Now, as I look at it, I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I’d probably be out of prison by now. But in context of the conditions of the time, it was the only thing to do. Now, I just want to get on with my life.”

Because that life includes Babineaux and the three children, Bembury has decided to fight extradition.

“Let me do my punishment out here so I can be near my family,” he said. “Who would benefit from putting me back in (a Massachusetts) jail?